SpaceX’s private Inspiration4 astronauts will return to Earth

The SpaceX Inspiration4 mission’s four newly minted citizen astronauts were set to splashdown in the Atlantic off the coast of Florida on Saturday, after a three-day voyage for the first all-civilian crew ever sent into Earth orbit.

The SpaceX Crew Dragon ship conducted two rocket “burns” on Friday to lower its altitude and align the capsule’s trajectory with the chosen landing point in preparation for atmospheric re-entry and return to Earth.

According to SpaceX; the private rocketry business founded by Tesla Inc electric automaker CEO Elon Musk, the Dragon capsule, called Resilience; is planned to parachute into the sea at 7 p.m. Eastern time, shortly before sunset.

The spacecraft was supplied by SpaceX; which launched it from Florida and flew it from their headquarters in the Los Angeles suburbs.

On Wednesday; the Inspiration4 crew launched from Cape Canaveral’s Kennedy Space Center atop one of SpaceX’s two-stage reusable Falcon 9 rockets.

The crew capsule had achieved a cruise orbital height of little over 363 miles (585 kilometers) in just over three hours; higher than the International Space Station or the Hubble Space Telescope; the furthest any human has gone from Earth since NASA’s Apollo lunar program concluded in 1972.

also, It was the first flight of Musk’s new space tourism company, putting him ahead of competitors that sell trips on rocket ships to wealthy customers eager to pay a modest fortune to experience the thrill of spaceflight and earn amateur astronaut wings.

The Inspiration4 team was managed by Jared Isaacman; CEO of the e-commerce startup Shift4 Payments Inc, who served as mission “commander.”

He had paid fellow billionaire Musk an undisclosed but allegedly substantial price; Time magazine estimated it to be over $200 million – for all four seats aboard the Crew Dragon.

Sian Proctor a geoscientist and former NASA astronaut candidate, Hayley Arceneaux a physician’s assistant and childhood bone cancer survivor, and Chris Sembroski an aerospace data engineer and Air Force veteran; were among Isaacman’s crewmates.

The flight was intended primarily to raise publicity and funds for one of Isaacman’s favorite charities, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, where Arceneaux was a patient and now works.

Despite the fact that Isaacman and Proctor are both certified pilots; the Inspiration4 crew had no part in flying the spacecraft, which was controlled by ground-based flight teams and onboard guidance systems.